What is Average Handling Time (AHT)?
Optimizing the Average Handle Time (AHT) is essential for improving the operational efficiency and customer satisfaction of your call center. An excessively long AHT can reveal organizational inefficiencies or training needs, while an AHT that is too short may indicate negligence in resolving customer issues.
By learning about the best practices for managing and reducing AHT, you can not only increase the productivity of your agents, but also deliver a superior customer experience. This article will provide you with concrete strategies and practical tips for calculating and mastering AHT to transform your contact center into a model of efficiency and quality.
Definition of Average Handle Time
AHT represents the average time required to manage a customer interaction from start to finish. This includes several elements:
- The Average Talk Time (ATT)
- The Hold Time (HT)
- The post-call processing time, also known as After-Call Work (ACW)
This indicator is essential for improving the performance of your contact center while ensuring customer satisfaction. An excessively long average handling time may indicate organizational or training issues. Conversely, a time that is too short may indicate partial or rushed resolutions to customer problems.
The Importance of AHT
The average handle time plays an important role in your customer relationship. Analyzing AHT allows you to improve the quality of customer service by identifying weak points at each stage of your customer interactions and by implementing strategies to correct them.
An optimized AHT means that advisors handle more requests, thereby improving productivity. And the more efficient your agents are, the more you reduce waiting times, which contributes to a better customer experience.
A fast handling time can improve the customer experience, but be careful not to sacrifice the quality of service. Combining AHT with your CSAT questionnaires will allow you to find the right balance between efficiency and the quality of the customer experience.
To summarize, the continuous measurement and adjustment of AHT contributes to providing a superior quality experience, thereby reinforcing customer satisfaction while optimizing productivity and processing costs.
How to calculate the average handle time in a call center?
To calculate the average handle time (AHT) in a call center, you must add all its components. As a reminder, the elements in question include:
- Average Talk Time (ATT): This is the time spent by the agent talking with the customer.
- Hold Time (HT): Represents the time during which the customer is on hold, often due to being put on hold or going through an interactive voice response (IVR) system.
- Follow-up time or After-Call Work (ACW): The time used by the agent to finish processing the call after hanging up.
The calculation formula is therefore as follows:
ASA = AHT + HT + ACW
AHT varies depending on the sector of activity and the nature of the requests. It is therefore crucial to adapt your performance objectives according to your type of customers and products or services.
7 tips for reducing the AHT of your customer relationship center
Analyze all your calls with Speech Analytics
Speech analytics is a powerful technology that can transform the way you evaluate the quality of your calls (Quality Monitoring). By transcribing and analyzing each telephone conversation, you can identify trends, recurring problems, and bottlenecks. This allows you to understand why some calls take longer than necessary to process and to make targeted improvements.
Offer targeted training and personalized coaching to agents.
Investing in targeted training and personalized coaching for your agents is essential to optimize the Average Handling Time (AHT) in your call center. By providing training tailored to the specific needs of each agent, you can improve their skills, engagement, and efficiency. This results in faster and more effective call handling, while maintaining a high quality of service.
Based on automated evaluations by Speech Analytics and manual monitoring by supervisors, you will be able to identify areas where each individual can improve. Use this information to create customized training programs that meet their specific needs. In parallel, implement personalized coaching sessions to provide ongoing support and practical advice.
Automate repetitive tasks.
Administrative and routine tasks, such as updating customer records, sending follow-up emails, or entering data, can consume valuable time that your agents could dedicate to more complex and high value-added interactions.
To implement automation, first identify the repetitive tasks that can be automated without compromising the quality of service. Use tools and software designed to automate these processes, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with integrated automation features.
By reducing the time spent on these tasks, your agents will be able to focus on resolving customer issues quickly and efficiently, which will help decrease AHT and improve the overall customer experience.
Simplify and standardize internal processes.
Complex and non-standardized processes can lead to inefficiencies, errors, and prolonged handling times. By streamlining these processes, you can improve the flow of operations and enable your agents to handle calls more quickly and efficiently.
Start by mapping your current processes to identify redundant or unnecessary steps. Then, work to simplify them by eliminating obstacles and automating steps where possible. Standardize procedures so that all agents follow the same steps to handle calls. This reduces variations and ensures a consistent and effective approach.
By making processes simpler and more uniform, you will help your agents navigate their daily tasks more easily, which will contribute to reducing AHT and providing a better customer experience.
Optimize your inbound and outbound call scripts.
Well-designed scripts enable your agents to handle calls more smoothly and efficiently, while ensuring that essential information is communicated clearly and quickly.
To optimize your scripts, start by analyzing existing conversations to identify points where calls tend to lengthen unnecessarily. Simplify and clarify messages by eliminating redundant information and structuring the scripts logically. Include ready-made answers for frequently asked questions and smooth transitions to guide agents through the call. Finally, regularly test the scripts with your agents and adjust them based on their feedback and performance data.
Implement a common knowledge base available to agents.
A well-organized knowledge base allows your agents to quickly access accurate and up-to-date information, which helps them answer customer questions more quickly and efficiently.
To create an effective knowledge base, start by gathering all relevant information, such as FAQs, procedure guides, response scripts, and solutions to common problems. Organize this information in an intuitive and easy-to-navigate manner. Ensure that the knowledge base is regularly updated to reflect the latest information and procedures. You can also encourage agents to document new solutions found to recurring problems to enrich this common knowledge base.
By providing your agents with quick access to a centralized resource, you reduce the time they spend searching for information, which helps to decrease AHT and improve the quality of customer service.
